Over the last few months, I’ve published a series of feature stories to outline the contributions Microsoft Research has made to the groundbreaking Kinect for Xbox 360 product, which Guinness World Records has dubbed the fastest-selling consumer electronic device ever.

That alone would make it memorable, but the stream of research leading to the paper and publication gained current acclaim last month, when, during UIST 2011, the paper received the Lasting Impact Award, for papers at least 10 years old that have been the most influential since publication.

HoloDesk uses a Kinect depth camera to enable the manipulation of virtual, 3-D objects with your hands. It remains a research project at this stage, but the potential to make our interactions with computers more natural is staggering, which is what has people all abuzz—even in the absence of many details. To rectify that absence, I reached out to Otmar Hilliges of the team that produced the technology to fill in a few of the gaps.

“We’re using a regular LCD screen to render perspective graphics that are reflected off a semi-silvered mirror,” he responded, referring to a semi-opaque mirror that partially reflects an image from the front and allows an image to shine through from behind. “The user looks through the semi-silvered mirror so that the scene behind the mirror and the reflected graphics appear combined.”

Gonthier, who spends a significant amount of his time collaborating with French researchers from INRIA at the Microsoft Research-INRIA Joint Centre, accepted the award, presented by France’s Académie des sciences, in Paris on Nov. 22 at the Institut de France. The honor was in recognition of his achievement as a researcher in a French laboratory who has made exceptional contributions to the vitality and influence of computer-science research while building outstanding cooperation with industry.

In the week before the awards ceremony, I got a chance to interview Gonthier about the award—and about his life’s work. Please see the Q&A posted on the Microsoft Research website.